“This is the other side of the question which public men who talk glibly about the war seek to have the people forget. They do not dwell on the immense debt of victorious Japan, and its practical impoverishment, nor do they recall to attention the appalling waste of Russia’s resources, its rickety finances, its shrunken commerce and the tens of millions of starving subjects of the Czar. It will be many years before the public credit of Great Britain, proud of the national wealth, recovers from the setback caused by the Boer War and the government is able to face much-needed reforms at home without misgivings about its income.”[[61]]
Statesmanship!
“Defense of our foreign commerce” is one of the heaviest arguments offered by capitalist statesmen in defense of the vast cost of militarism—with insufferable ignorance neglecting the fact that the total annual cost of militarism for nineteen European countries and the United States and Japan (eight billion dollars) is equal to more than 66 per cent. of the total annual export trade of all the nations of all the world.[[62]]
Statesmanship!
“Great” men guiding the “Ship of State”—to the rocks!
Thus the nations stagger round and round in a stupid circle, the statesmen planning international wholesale butcherings, the working class blinded with blood and sweat and tears. Greater armies, greater navies,—then still greater armies and still greater navies,—and then still more powerful armies and navies: then impossible taxation, intolerable burdens: then bankruptcy:—then wrath, rebellion and revolution,—this constitutes the near-future program for at least eight “great” nations of the world, if they continue, as at present, to surrender to the vanity of kings, tsars, presidents, mikados, and give free rein to the profit-lusting capitalist masters of the world. Militarism is the international political whirlpool. The maelstrom opens—the chasm yawns, spreads wide its huge jaws for the capitalist ship of state.
Be not deceived:
It is sincere, well-founded fear of bankruptcy (and it is not conscience) that chiefly induces many capitalist statesmen to co-operate, at present, so loudly (and piously) with international peace societies.
Bankruptcy, rebellion, revolution—
It is time for Caesar to be pious and whine for “a limitation on armaments.”